Seasoned Members Class (part 4)

the New Testament cares about are character traits rather than skills. It's based on your behavior, your character.

What's... Janet? That is very true, yes.

It is not unique to elders. Any Christian man or woman really ought to be able to aspire to most of the character traits listed there.

But I think what we see here is that when it comes to eldership, there must be something about their role and their responsibility where the character, their character is the most important thing, right?

It's the most important thing. By and large, when we're talking about good leadership in society,

I think even secular society recognizes that we want leaders of good character.

We don't particularly like having leaders who are not of good character, but sometimes we can have people who are good leaders in a particular way, shape, or form, or a certain kind of responsibility or role, whatever kind of leadership we're talking about, where that man or woman is not particularly a great person, a good character person, but they have the skills necessary to get the job done, and so we make...

we follow them, we make them the leader, right? I think we see this especially when we look through history at, like, military generals, right?

If you study the character, there have certainly been, through history, plenty of people who were really successful, great military generals who were not really the nicest gentlemen, right?

You're probably not a guy you wanted to hang out with or make friends with or raise your kids, but they got the job done when it came to winning the battles, right?

And so they were... we still think of them as great military leaders, but when we talk about leadership in a church, we want someone with great character.

Now the skills it does mention about eldership, the spiritual gifts, the skills that it really talks about are two slash three.

Talks about oversight, ruling, talks about shepherding, and it talks about teaching.

Look in 1 Timothy chapter 5, verse 17, let the elders who rule well, there's the ruling part, and they better do it well, be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and in teaching.

And in fact, when we compare the list back in 1 Timothy 3, if you compare the two lists of overseers versus deacons, there's only one difference between the two lists, and the one difference is that under the elders, it says they need to be good at teaching.

It doesn't say that about deacons. Now it doesn't mean that deacons can't also be good teachers and teach,

I hope not, because hi. But it does mean that if you're going to be an elder, that's one of the minimums, right, is that you can be skilled at teaching.

Would you note especially, though, in 1 Timothy 5, verse 17, how there... Paul seems to expect some difference in how elders might serve, because see, in that second phrase of the verse, it says, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching, right?

So when you see that, you can say to yourself, ah, so that means that there will be some elders who might not labor in that, or might not labor in that as a primary focus, but some of them will definitely labor in that.

And when we see labor there, you should think, start to think occupation. You should start to think full -time kind of ministry, right?

So that's really what this is alluding towards, is that there will be some elders who will be doing this as their full -time role.

But we'll see, as we go through this, that the New Testament always talks about elders in the plural, and there is this notion, this idea that as a plural group of men, that some of them will do some stuff, and some of them will do other stuff, and they will do all of it together, but that God will use their varying skills that they have, they all have the same good character, but God will use their varying skills to put it together and make one really great whole.

Now the New Testament uses three terms for these folks, and it uses them rather interchangeably.

Does anybody know what the three terms are? They are elder, I've already been saying that, overseer, yep, or bishop, and a third one, the title that we give

Mike and Steve, pastor, right, pastor. Look at 1

Peter chapter 5, somebody read that for me, 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 1 and 2.

Alright, so, in that verse, in those two verses, but one sentence, Peter uses all three of those terms at once, right, that's the point

I want to make about when I say that he uses them rather interchangeably, okay, he uses all three of the terms at once.

At the very beginning we see elders, right, and that Greek word there where you see elders in this sentence is presbyteros, kind of butchering it a little bit, but presbyter, right, we all know that as the root word in the denomination of Presbyterian, okay.

So presbyter, presbyteros, elder, usually is translated as elder. And then where you see overseer, or here, like, exercising oversight, we get sort of the different form of it, but the noun form of that Greek word would be episcopi, which is episcopalian, right, we have that in the root word, but episcopi, which essentially means overseer, although it used to be translated bishop, but we tend to not like to use the term bishop in Protestant circles because of the

Catholic baggage that comes along with it, right, but if it weren't for that baggage, there'd be nothing wrong biblically with calling our elders bishops, it's just that the world would totally misinterpret that and they would have no idea, they would think completely wrong things about what we're trying to say.

But bishop is the word for it, okay, is the idea of overseer. And then the last one, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, so there's the third term, and that is poimen, which just literally means shepherd, right, but we transliterate that word a little bit and we end up with pastor, and pastoral, right, the setting of the meadow out there with the sheep and the man sitting on the rock and watching over and everything's peaceful and idyllic, right, the stream flowing through.

So that's pastor. Now Ephesians 4 .11,

we won't turn there, but I'll just tell you, Ephesians 4 .11 combines that term, that Greek term, also with the

Greek for teacher, and so you end up with pastor -teacher, right, and pastor -teacher, it's kind of one of the,

I'd say it's sort of a fashionable title nowadays, there are a lot of churches liking to call their senior pastor the pastor -teacher, like that's the title they want to give him.

But you know, Paul does seem to use it as an actual combined term, right, as one of the terms.

And often you see pastor or pastor -teacher being used for the full -time staff and then elder for the lay leaders, and I really wanted to make something out of this with these three different terms.

I was studying them all, I wanted to say something like, you know, like, oh, this word describes how this part of their role and this word is more about how this part of their role, but no, it was turning into Greek word salad.

It's just not true, but it's really just true to say that they are just interchangeable terms for the same office.

We might use them with some distinction in our modern times, but the Bible just really doesn't. The New Testament just really doesn't.

Now there is one more word that I haven't mentioned yet, and that is, but is one described without the titles of church officers, and that is deaconos, deaconos, which means helper in Greek, means helper.

We transliterate it from the Greek to say deacon, and of course we know that deacons are, as their term is, helpers, right?

They are assistants. They are there to provide assistance to the elders to sort of do that operational day -to -day kind of work so that the elders can focus on the preaching, on the study of the word, on prayer, on pastoring, and then the deacons sort of do that, you know, the hands -on, nitty -gritty kind of work, and we see that in Acts 6 when they're first inaugurated in the first place.

But I just want to point out that, you know, we have this kind of fancy term for it, deacon, but remember, if you were

Greek, if you were a Greek, you were just going around calling these guys the help, all right?

You were just saying, helper, come over here and help, right? They were just the help. So lest any of us deacons get too prideful or haughty about our titles, we're just the help guys, all right?

So that's the way it is. Now at BBC, I talk about this in the new members class, but I want to just reemphasize it here so I think most of you already understand this.

But at BBC, we do not have some kind of strict hierarchy when it comes to elders and deacons, all right?

Some people kind of get that impression because in the bulletin, if you open it up on the first page there, you'll see a list of all the different ministries, and you'll see a deacon's name, right?

And it says deacon, and then it shows them, and it could give the impression that, like, these deacons are, like, in charge of these ministries.

They are not. They are the help, all right? Now it might be the case, I'm looking out across the audience and looking at some of my deacons here, that some of those deacons really are in charge of those ministries, but that's because they are the ministry leaders as well.

They're wearing their ministry leader hat when they're doing that, not their deacon hat, all right? So, like,

Taylor is the ministry leader of Awana, all right? He is also the deacon of Awana, but that just is convenient because we made him a deacon, so we could just say, oh, good, we have the deacon as well.

So, what deacons do is they come alongside those ministry leaders.

It is their job to be there to make sure that those leaders have everything they need in order to get that ministry done.

You need resources? We're here for you. Do you need help? We're here for you. Do you have a big problem and you don't know how to solve it?

We're here for you. We want to be deacons. We want to be the ones that you think of, like, you know, in emergency, break glass.

We want it to be in emergency, call deacon, right? So we don't run it.

They don't report to us or anything like that, and in the same way, the deacons do not, there's not, like, some kind of strict tree hierarchy where then the deacons report up into one of the four elders and, you know, all the elders have, like, where they are in charge of these certain ministries, right, kind of thing.

It's the same way in that the elders are, you know, want to know what's going on and keep involved and whatnot, but we don't have any of that kind of particular, like, you know, report structure.

This is not a corporation. This is not a military. We don't have officers in that kind of sense.

So one author puts it thusly. He says there may be distinctions drawn between vocational and lay elders or deacons in terms of the focus and the intensity of their service, but their fundamental character as under -shepherds of the flock of God is shared.

Under -shepherding. And we want to use the term under -shepherd simply as an acknowledgment of the fact that we still have a head shepherd, and that head shepherd, of course, is the great shepherd,

Jesus himself. As shepherds, elders guide, protect, teach, discipline, govern.

Their authority over the church is not by force or dictatorial power, but by, let's turn to Hebrews 13, 7.

This is their authority over the church. Hebrews 13, verse 7.

Somebody read that? Their authority over us, over the church, is by precept, by the teaching, the word of God that they spoke to you, and by their example, imitate their way of life.

Any thoughts or questions on that before I proceed onward? All right.

So now for the rest of this class, I'm going to actually walk you through a few bits from our membership covenant.

Those of you who, it wasn't so long ago that you did new members class, you probably remember this. Those of you who it's been a while, maybe the details are a little fuzzy, good news!

That's your handout today. I thought to myself, you know what, for those, especially for those of us who it's been a long while,

I see this all the time because I do keep teaching new members class, but I thought, why don't I, as a handout,

I'm going to hand out the membership covenant to everyone, just so you can see it again, read it over, look at it, think about it, be refreshed on what it is when it comes to our responsibilities and our privileges as church members.

So I'll hand that out at the end, but I'm going to first talk about, it's a two -way covenant, all right?

And one whole section of the covenant is about the elders' responsibilities to you all.

All right? So we're going to start with that, and then we will talk at the end, I'm going to make sure I save enough time for us to talk about what our responsibilities to the elders are.

All right? In fact, I'm going to go a little bit faster through the first one. All right, so their responsibilities to you.

It says, we commit ourselves to lovingly care for you and seek your growth in Christ.

We covenant to provide teaching, preaching, and counsel from the scriptures. We've talked about those two already.

We commit that this teaching will span the whole counsel of God. The whole counsel,

I'm sorry, the whole counsel of God's word. Same thing. The whole counsel of God's word.

And of course, we see that happening, particularly when it comes here in the pulpit ministry, in that we do what kind of preaching at BBC?

There's a lot of mumbling. What's that? Expository, yes. Thank you, Mark. Yes, expository preaching.

And what's expository preaching? Right, you preach through the

Bible, verse by verse. And the opposite to that,

I don't know if it's opposite, but maybe the alternative to that would be topical preaching, where every week the pastor just decides this is the topic

I want to preach on, and he gets up and he preaches about that particular topic. But I will say that there is such a thing as expositopical.

Because I've experienced it, all right, in other churches, not here, but in other churches

I've been in. And that's where the pastor purports to be preaching expositorily and to be going through the

Bible. But really, the verses are just sort of like the launching pad, the introduction of the day, right?

It's like, okay, well, we were at this point within Ephesians, we're somewhere in Ephesians chapter four, so I'm going to read those two verses,

I'm going to make some comment about them, but I'm going to very quickly move on to the thing I really want to talk to you about today, right?

And they fake it. And so that's not expository preaching.

It's not expository preaching to just read the verses, right, and follow some kind of reading plan through as you go.

So, expository preaching means that we really use the text of the day to dig in as to what it truly means, that we assert and believe strongly that every single part of it is important and valuable and needs to be well understood.

And so we dig, dig, dig, dig through every single part of the word.

We also, it goes on to say, we commit to helping you in times of need, and it cites particularly

Acts 2 in that, and we did that a few sessions ago. But note that when the elders say that they're going to help us in times of need, it doesn't always mean that they might help directly, okay?

And indeed, if there is, say, like an expensive problem with the gas boiler in my house,

I am not looking for Scott to come over and fix my boiler, all right? That is, and do the plumbing.

That is where their talent as a gifted overseer is what comes into play.

Who around here has the right skills, the right opportunity, or maybe who needs to do a little growing of their own in terms of being a, you know, being serving to someone else, who's that person that needs to be?

And then the elders figure that out, and they plug that person in right into meeting that need, okay?

So that's what that statement means. We also, here in the covenant, it says, we covenant that your elders and deacons will meet the criteria assigned to them in the scriptures.

And we just looked at that, 1 Timothy 3. We covenant to pray for you regularly, particularly when you are sick.

Turn to James 5, please. James chapter 5,

James 5 verse 14. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord. How many of you have ever seen or been in or participated in or something an anointing of the sick ceremony?

Okay, a few of you. All right. I don't think that this is an ordinance of the church.

I've seen those kind of services before, and I think even in good conservative churches, and I definitely see the benefit of doing this publicly.

This idea of where the person who is ill, right, is sort of stands in the front or comes up to the front, and the elders put the oil on them and pray over them in front of everyone else.

I think one of the benefits of doing that in such a public way as part of a service is it really does exhort the whole congregation to pray for that person, all right?

It's not just the elders. Now the whole church body is really well aware of the needs of that person and is really, you know, hopefully kind of leads everyone to be in a deeper, stronger, more frequent, consistent prayer for that individual, right?

So I think that's great. But there are some possible downsides to that, too, when you do it so publicly up in front.

Anybody think of any? Yep. There's definitely that, yep.

Where do you start drawing the line between what's sick enough, right? Yep, mm -hmm. There you go.

Yeah, that was the one I really wanted to talk about was, boy, that oil must be some kind of magic, right?

Is the oil magical? Does it have any power in it whatsoever? I'll add to this.

Do the elders' prayers have some kind of extra special super potency? Do they?

No. So what happens is when you get into these is that sometimes you're kind of on that slippery slope towards this very man -centered situation where you're falling into the error of that the ceremony itself has the healing power, right?

And you're just two steps away from Pentecostal services at that point, right?

And so, and that the elders, like I said, that they have some kind of super extra potent prayer power.

And, in fact, that's actually refuted just a few verses later in James in verses 16 through 18.

Look down there. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Notice it just says a righteous person here.

We're not talking about elders anymore. Just any righteous person. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours and he prayed fervently that it might not rain and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

Then he prayed again and the heavens gave rain and the earth bore its fruit. The point of this was not to talk about how great

Elijah was and see if you, see that means that, you know, he was awesome and so he could pray for that.

The point was that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Like all of us.

And yet, despite that nature, despite his imperfection, despite his commonness, his prayers were effective.

Not because of him, but because of God. Because of the object of his prayers. Because of the person he was praying to.

That's what made his prayers effective. So you always want to make sure that the focus is on Jesus himself, right?

On God. On the great physician. In the healing. All right, let's keep going.

The elders also covenant to be on guard against false teachers. Covenant to exercise church discipline when necessary.

We talked about church discipline a few sessions ago, but I just want to reiterate here.

A good question on Ask Ligonier podcast came up recently and somebody asked, they said, if the church is called to be a loving community, why do we exercise church discipline?

Excellent. Mr. Zook with a solid answer. Because we are a loving community.

That's right. But can you say more about that? What do you mean by that? That was the answer that Lawson gave on the podcast too.

Yep. That's absolutely right. Yep. That in the actions of church discipline, you are in fact being very loving to that person because the goal of church discipline is not to shun, the goal is to restore.

The goal is to bring them back. To show them the error of their ways and encourage them, exhort them to turn and return, right?

And restore and for them to be restored. So you are being loving and that you are rescuing them from their sinfulness.

And as John said, you are also, as elders, when you're exercising church discipline, being protective of the rest of the flock so that that person's sin or whatever trouble they are causing does not lead to, you know, spread and lead to the splash damage so to speak across the whole congregation if it just goes unchecked.

Andrew? Okay. One more thing from the covenant of the elders towards us.

It says, we covenant to help you become equipped to serve Christ. And it cites

Ephesians 4, 11 through 13. And I'll read that for you where it says, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ.

So oh, hey, it's not their job as elders to do all the serving. It's their job to equip us to do all the serving.

So with that, it's a good segue to our responsibilities to them, all right?

Our responsibilities to them. But before we do that, before I leave there, does anybody have any other questions about the elders' responsibility to us or anything that you think

I left out? No? Steve, did I leave anything out? No, great.

My daughters have a storybook called, How to Babysit a Grandma. I really love it.

It's a cute story because it kind of turns the expected on its head, right? Grandma, of course, is doing the babysitting in the story, not the little kid.

But in its cute way, the little kid is convinced that it's her job to watch grandma, right?

And she has to do, like, oh, I got to make sure I play a game with grandma. And we got to, grandma really, if she doesn't bake, she gets really sad.

So we have to make sure that we bake while I go to grandma's house, right? So this is really, right? And in a cute way, it shows all the little ways that kids who are being watched actually can be a blessing to the one who's watching them.

And so for the rest of this session, I'm going to do the same with our elders, in which I'm going to say, how do we serve them, exhort them, maybe even admonish them, and bless them especially, and care for them, all right?

So it's the care and feeding now of our elders, okay, for the rest of this session today.

All right, so we're going to look again at the membership covenant, but then we're going to wrap it up with some points of my own. Now, not every one of the responsibilities in the covenant directly relate to the elders, but I'm going to look at some selected ones, okay?

For that. All right, here's one. It says, I have read and understood the BBC doctrinal statement, our statement of faith, and agree not to be divisive in its teaching.

I understand the importance of submission to church leadership and will be diligent to preserve unity and peace.

Be eager, it says. The covenant says to be diligent to preserve unity, but Ephesians 4, 1 through 3, verse 3 in particular says, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

So this is the verb eager, right? Be eager to maintain unity. And when I read that, what I think to myself is, that ought to be our first instinct.

Our first instinct, our first step in any kind of disagreement, our gut reaction, and then action, ought to be towards maintaining unity rather than drawing a line or starting a fight.

I'll say it this way. If you ever feel the need to preface a statement, I know this is going to sound divisive, but stop.

Don't even say that part. Maybe give that statement a day or two to marinate in your brain and think about whether or not it ever really needed to be said.

Proverbs 17, 14 says, the beginning of strife is like letting out of water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.

Picture in your mind when you read that proverb of the little Dutch boy at the dike that is bursting and that there's these little spits of water coming out because the dam's about to go, right?

And the boy is sticking his fingers here and there trying to plug the holes and keep the water from coming out.

Once you let the water come out, once the water starts spilling, you can't scoop the water back up and put it back in the pail.

That's the letting out of water. So quit before the quarrel breaks out. I covenant to submit to the authority of the scriptures as the final arbiter on all issues.

And it cites no less than Psalm 119. So we'll read that now. Psalm 119.

Yeah. Which, of course, the entire Psalm, longest Psalm in the Bible, that entire Psalm, every single verse in Psalm 119 is about how much the author of the

Psalm loves God's law. I love your law. I love your precepts.

I love your word. Every verse, it just kind of keeps cycling through all the different terms and phrases that you might use for the scriptures.

But just I love it. I love it. I love it. And we here at BBC, we have a statement of faith.

We have doctrines that we hold to. We have teachings that we hold to. We have study

Bibles that we like, right? We have particular podcasts that we'd say are a good idea for you to listen to.

But ultimately, the scriptures are our final arbiter on all issues.

Nothing will break the heart of your elders faster and harder than saying, I know the

Bible says this, but because whatever follows after that, but is the path of destruction.

We must submit to the authority of the word. Covenant also says,

I will strive to properly manage the resources God has given me, including my time, body, gifts and talents, attitudes, finances, and possessions.

And I want to note, especially in that statement, the properly managed part. It starts out with,

I will properly manage those resources. Because good elders are not looking to burn out their people.

They don't want to leave people in a state of lazy apathy either, though.

So like most things in the Christian life, somewhere in the middle is the right place to be.

I commit to using the spiritual gifts God has given me for building up of the church, both at BBC and universally.

And that gets to what I started out this whole section with when I said that the elders responsibility is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

But I want to point out that when it says that to use those spiritual gifts for building up of the church, since we're talking specifically about elders here, don't forget that elders and their families are church members too.

And so your spiritual gifts are meant to be of service to all your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Therefore, that does include them, right? Our spiritual gifts also are for the benefit of our elders and their families too.

Now let's talk a little bit more with the few minutes we have left when it comes to the idea of responding to their leadership.

Because 1 Peter 5, 5 says, likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders, clothe yourselves all of you with humility towards one another for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Now I know it says younger and older here, but I don't think Peter had age in view, but rather Christian maturity.

He's singling out those who are early in their Christian walk to be sure to be humble.

Why does he have to say that to the younger in Christ, the newer in Christ, and not the older?

Why is it important to tell those folks to be humble? Anybody here used to be a younger

Christian and now you're an older? Charlie! Yes, our zeal outpaces our knowledge.

That's a good way to put it, yep. So the younger Christian is definitely more prone to this.

We know that as believers grow, they get more humble, not less, right? And so I think that's what

Peter has in mind here. Worldly wisdom would almost expect the opposite, right? Like, oh, I've got a lot of experience in this

Christian thing, so now I'm, you know, I can speak with authority now, right, kind of thing. Let me tell you about what's really happening here.

But rather, in fact, what is true in Christ is that as we grow, we get more humble and not less.

But does that mean, or let me just ask this question, are your elders always right?

Steve. Janet, are our elders always right?

No. Okay. Whew, okay. Good, I can go on with my lesson then.

Yes, no, they're not always right. And the New Testament, in fact, even gives examples of admonishing elders.

Peter, right, we hear about Peter needing to be admonished over his mistakes in Galatians 2. Paul having to confront him.

He was an elder, he was an apostle even, and he was making a mistake about showing favoritism and preference towards the

Jewish people in his congregation, and so Paul needed to confront him about that. And also, one that this book that I was reading pointed out, and I never really thought of it this way, but that there was a neglection of the widows in Acts chapter 6.

It wasn't intentional. The elders weren't trying to ignore the people who needed something, but the congregation, the people needed to come to the apostles and say, hey, the widows are being neglected, we need to help them.

They hadn't noticed, and they needed to be admonished about helping them. And then they came up with a plan and said, oh, that sounds, you're right, we absolutely need to, let's figure out how we can do that, and they inaugurated, they set aside deacons for that.

But the point being that elders have blind spots, they have weaknesses, they are men, they need help, right?

And so humility, when we talk about being humble with our elders and how we talk to them, it doesn't mean, never question my authority, but it does mean having a tactful and humble conversation.

And I think the practical way to talk about this, and by the way, this is good really for any kind of difficult conversation, not just one in which you need to admonish someone, but it's to go into it with the posture that you must be wrong and you're misunderstanding.

Start by thinking to yourself, I must not understand what they're really trying to say here. It sounded wrong to me, it sounded like I didn't know, something's not sitting right with me, but it must be that I'm wrong here and I just don't understand.

And so you go to them and you ask, do I have this right? Could you help me better understand?

Maybe they really are wrong in that situation, but when you approach the conversation that way, that's the way of approaching it with humility.

Andrew, sometimes you're just not going to know and we do have to just trust them. But that's the point of, that's why going in with that kind of attitude, right?

Otherwise, the opposite to that would be this super confrontational sort of approach of just like, hey, you know, or worse yet, so and so pastor on the podcast that I was listening to the other day says that this is what

Paul's teaching in Ephesians and Mike just preached the other thing, you know? Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah. All right, it's 949, so I'm going to bring this plane in hot.

We're going to land real hot today, all right? I have five points that I just want to ask you to do about how to serve your elders, how to respond to their membership, their leadership.

Number one is respect. And respect means the act of acknowledging their worth because of their position, which basically means to esteem them and to esteem the office.

And when I, what I really encourage you to do there practically is to refuse to participate in rumors or backbiting about them.

All right? If there's something that you feel like needs to be confronted, then follow the follow the instructions of the

New Testament on how to admonish an elder and do it humbly. And but don't just keep it in the background.

Or gossiping, right? Number two, love. Love them.

Love them with a warm honor or with a deep affection. The letter, the thank you note.

You know, the smallest but most out of the blue things are the probably the ones that are the most edifying.

And especially I might say not to embarrass them, but please do have even special consideration for the lay elders because recognize that they're balancing their own full -time job on on top of these responsibilities, right?

So that every little bit of appreciation can be really uplifting. Number three, follow their example.

As we saw in Hebrews 13 7. This does not mean, you know, don't, don't, like you don't have to do over imitation.

I don't have to imitate Mike's taste in music, right? Or Steve's favorite hobbies. Although I do like some of Steve's favorite hobbies.

But it does mean, you know, one thing we can do practically is offer words of encouragement by sharing some specific examples of how you've chosen to imitate them.

Right? That goes a long way because it shows them like probably it's not even a thing they were trying to do and point out or make a big public deal.

But you say to them, you know, I noticed this about you and this is and I want to be follow you in that way and how you're following Christ.

Maybe that's a good specific thing you can put in that. Thank you. No. Number four. Joyfully.

In Hebrews 13 7, it talks about serving and obeying with joy in our house. We have this little saying that we recite to the kids.

Maybe some of you do it too. We say that you should obey right away, all the way, the happy way. Right away, all the way, the happy way.

And I think that's what the writer of Hebrews has in mind when he says to obey with joy or joyfully.

Because your elders can tell if your submission is begrudging or forced.

And maybe it does have to be that way at first because you were of a differing opinion. But please don't dig in on that.

Allow yourself to have that sort of teachable spirit and heart. Do the little things well.

Because keep in mind the principle that those who can be trusted with little can be trusted with much.

And the author of this book that I was reading talked about just the little things of like showing up on time, being generous, smiling during the sermon, make some eye contact with the preacher every once in a while.

Volunteer for those little drudgery jobs that no one is going to notice. And maybe no one will even say thank you for.

And then last, number five, please respond prayerfully. Over and over again in the

New Testament, Paul begs, pleads with his readers to pray for him. And if Paul the

Apostle needed prayers, then certainly so do our elders. In fact, it's probably the most important thing you can do for them but also easily neglected.

Spurgeon, I'll leave you with this quote. Spurgeon, when he was asked why he was so successful in ministry, his response was, my people pray for me.

My people pray for me. All right. So that is the last of our sessions.

As I said here, I have the handouts. I also just want to recommend to you this book.

I was going to talk to Ben about maybe getting it in the church bookstore. It's called Love Your Church by Tony Merida.

A lot of the content that I've done here in the seasoned members class I got from this book. Eight great things about being a church member.

And each chapter has belonging, welcoming, gathering, caring, serving, honoring, witnessing, and sending.

And I found this extremely valuable, really eye -opening in a lot of small details, plenty of really practical wisdom stuff, a lot of which

I've been sharing in this class, so I highly recommend it. Okay. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for our church and the people of our church and how amazing this group of folks that you have put together here in West Boylston to bring honor and glory to your name.

Father, we are poor, weak, imperfect vessels, and yet you have chosen to use us in your mission and in your plan for this world to preach the gospel and spread your kingdom.

I pray that we would all take seriously our responsibility of building one another up, of always seeing the others in our church as more important than ourselves, always seeking to serve their needs first.

Lord, would you be especially, as we've been talking today about our elders, especially with them in giving them wisdom, giving them unity with each other, giving them,

Lord, the strength and endurance in all that they do to serve, patience with us when we fall short or fail and need them to pick us back up.

We thank you for the love that they have shared for us, and we pray that we would love them in return.